


the progression of sadness

by suheafoams



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Character Study, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Joonmyun-centric, M/M, onesided joonmyun/sehun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 23:26:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6304354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suheafoams/pseuds/suheafoams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>joonmyun is afraid, that sadness is going to become his skin and hair, his flesh and bones, the blood running through his veins. he ends up being wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the progression of sadness

**Author's Note:**

> there is a happy ending in store!! implied suicide attempts as well, but i didn't go into detail and describe it abstractly at most. don't read if you are uncomfortable, emotional safety is important. 
> 
> so this isn't the actual sukai fic i was planning to post (i'm still working on that one since it's a big long), but this is one i wrote in the last 24 hours since i had a really rough two days. i needed to create a comfort fic and get the nasty feelings out of my system. 
> 
> as a note for after you finish: i don't think a person needs romantic gratification in order to be happy, but that is how i like my stories. jm is a really precious bb to me and i'm glad that i'm writing about him again after a long hiatus.

Sadness is ocean waves that continue to wash over Joonmyun even after he’s shouted and screamed defeat. He begs for forgiveness in his repentance, but it’s no use. They come after him even as he crawls away, snatching and curling their cold, foamy fingers around his legs as he nearly gets pulled under and drowns. In his mind, everything is so loud that he can’t hear anything but ringing in his ears; whether it’s from the water’s roaring or his own voice, he doesn’t know.

He ends up on the shore in the end. Breath ragged and heart pounding, he looks back at what almost swallowed him and never spit him back out. The feeling of clammy clothes sand sticking in between his wet toes is uncomfortable, to say the least, but he is alive. It is more than what he can say for most people like him.

He lets out a small sigh, and comes home. 

The cold weather and his soaked clothes gets the better of him eventually, causing him to wind up with a cold during the spring. Even then, Joonmyun doesn’t care, and in a twisted sense, he looks forward to seeing the ocean again soon.    

  


+

  


Sadness is the look Joonmyun gives Sehun when Sehun isn’t watching carefully enough, when Sehun thinks he is laughing but Joonmyun is actually shedding a tear in his heart because Sehun is much too far from him. His hand doesn’t belong in Sehun’s, and the ever present reminder hurts him the same as if someone drove a dagger into his chest every single day.

Sehun’s eyes are full of life. They grow brighter as time passes, but Joonmyun’s eyes darken, like the lights that gradually go out in a house that’s been abandoned for good. He remembers to shine light back into them whenever Sehun is watching him too seriously, with an expression that means he wishes he understood Joonmyun better. However, Joonmyun knows best, and Sehun would never want to take on the burden of a love like this.

Sehun has a girlfriend, who is small, and cute, and all that Joonmyun can only dream of being. He is jealous of the soft gaze Sehun reserves just for her, and never for Joonmyun. In his stronger moments, Joonmyun will tell himself that true love doesn’t require change; yet in his desperate ones, he tells God that he’d do anything for an unrequited love to stop being one sided. 

 _Perhaps, it would hurt less if I became the ocean,_ Joonmyun thinks, at times, and closes his eyes to imagine the waves washing over him and turning him into nothing.

  


+

  


Sadness is disappointment that can’t be released, and doesn’t fade even with the world’s loudest distractions. His mother always told him to trust in himself and his efforts, but what is Joonmyun supposed to do when his efforts don’t prove worthy enough? Can he keep going even if nothing is going right for him? Expectations that fail to be met lead to a depression that’s as hard to get out of as quicksand. Joonmyun feels like he’s trying to climb up out of a vortex with sand continually thrown onto him in attempts to make him fall back down.

Of course, Joonmyun has friends like Baekhyun and Chanyeol to fill up the silence he fears hearing on a daily basis, but even their laughter cannot seal the holes in his poorly patched up armor. When he lays in bed at night, with only the sound of his heartbeat to accompany him, he lists out everything that went wrong for him and calculates whether the benefits or the costs of living weighs heavier in his heart.  

His mother worries,  and constantly asks if he is okay. It is as if she thinks he’ll do something to worry her, but he tells her she is fine. She has nothing to worry about, or at least, nothing that she is capable of taking responsibility for. He says nothing to his older brother or his father either, although he can feel their questioning eyes trained on his back whenever he walks through the house soundlessly.

He doesn’t taste food, or hear music, or see nature. He consumes numbly, hears vibrations and changes in frequency, and sees colors and shapes that don’t translate into his higher phases of emotional processing. It’s not like he wanted this to happen, but he has utterly lost control and his world, though filled with color in the past, has become as good as gray in the moment.  

  


+

  


Sadness...is the way Joonmyun’s lungs seem to collapse in on themselves even when he knows there’s nothing wrong with his body physically. His hospital check ups indicate that nothing is wrong, so why is it so hard for him to even breathe?

Inhale, exhale. Is he supposed to memorize a bodily function that is meant to occur involuntarily?

Heart disease may be one of the top killers, but he thinks that heartbreak, in all its different aspects, is the biggest one no one talks about.

He spends a lot of time at the beach, looking out onto the ocean, and his parents think it is therapy. They don’t know that, for him, it is a promise of what’s yet to come.

  


+

  


Fear is the way Joonmyun has to squeeze the breath out of himself as he realizes what he has done. Inhale, inhale, inhale. Exhale, inhale. The bottle falls out of his hand, even though he doesn’t mean to drop it. The disconnect between his brain and his limbs is horrifying.  

Spiraling, spiraling out of control. What would his mother say?

 _Nothing is wrong,_ Joonmyun thinks. _If you leave out everything._

The fade to black, even in his final moments, is like a movie that has ended well.  

  


+

  


Movies, unfortunately, have sequels.

  


+

  


The reappearance of a new sadness may replace old pain, but certainly brings stronger feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety. It is difficult to determine which type of sadness is worse. Who is more pitiable, the victim in all their suffering or the witnesses that have finally been enlightened to the victim’s anguish?

This new sadness, Joonmyun realizes, is the terrified way his family looks at him whenever he says he’s going to sleep, or go out, or do anything, really. He wonders if it might help for him to say he doesn’t want to become the ocean again, anytime soon. They don’t believe that he goes on nature walks for the sake of nature, so they probably won’t believe him if he says that out loud either.

When they will relax again, he doesn’t know. Probably not for a long, long time.  

Emptiness, on top of feeling trapped, on top of an expectation to stay and not escape. It’s a little heavy for Joonmyun, who doesn’t do well with chains on his wrists and ankles, but he bears with it because he doesn’t want to make his mother cry. For a woman who is so tough, her shedding tears reveals immense pain, and Joonmyun doesn’t want to wield that sort of power ever again. Twice is more than Joonmyun is willing or capable of handling.

  


+

  


It takes a long time, but sadness evolves, into an invisible string that ties itself around Joonmyun that only he can feel and see. It pulls him toward the ocean on days where he loses control too fast, too violently. He learns to go through motions, how to look happy and appear as if he is recovering so that no one worries. To be honest, he is doing well in his work, despite still feeling incomplete at times.

Even so, it is a challenge to walk on the line of imitation, because one wrong step could send him falling into a hole too deep for anyone to rescue him from. Back into the vortex he’ll go.

  


+

  


What Joonmyun realizes, eventually, is that sadness is not invisible. It is clear as day for everyone around him, but no one knows how to pull him back without pushing him over the edge a second time.

  


+

  


Sehun has a baby boy now. They don’t talk anymore, thanks to Joonmyun’s self-preventative measures, but Joonmyun sees the whole family at a bookstore when he’s trying to find a birthday gift for one of his friends. They seem to be doing well. Sehun is pointing at something in the book, while his son sits in his lap. The wife, Jisoo, Joonmyun remembers, is hovering nearby with an absent-minded smile on her face.

Joonmyun picks out an appropriate book, has it wrapped as a gift, and buys coffee in the cafe that’s embedded in the bookstore. He turns away when Sehun and his family pass by the small table he’s sitting at, but he doesn’t think it would have mattered anyway. They don’t see him.

  


+

  


Joonmyun is still sipping on his coffee when he gets to the restaurant his brother is meeting him in. His family insists on having meals together at least once a week so they can check up on him. It’s been years since the incident, so he doesn’t understand why they’ve continued to worry for so long.

There is another man sitting next to his brother at the table. “Joonmyunnie. I have a friend I want you to meet,” Joonmyun’s brother says.

_(His brother was leaning against the doorway, looking conflicted. He finally asked, “Are you gay?”_

_“No,” Joonmyun had said. Over, and over, and over again, until he was a heap of limbs and uncontrollable shaking on the floor, and his brother almost said sorry as many times as Joonmyun said no.)_

Joonmyun smiles, not really caring that it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s nice to meet you...” He trails off.

“Jongin,” the man finishes, holding out his hand. His hair is swept back with gel,  his skin a golden tone, and he’d be handsome, if Joonmyun was going to allow himself to be interested.

Joonmyun shakes his hand, ignoring the jolt of attraction he feels in his gut, and says, “Nice to meet you, Jongin-ssi.”

  


+

  


Sadness is integrated so deeply into Joonmyun’s idea of himself that he’s confused when he realizes the grief is starting to fade, like a favorite shirt that’s been washed too many times and has to be thrown out eventually. His fingers clutch as tightly as they possibly can to what he thinks is his identity but is actually a bad habit he can’t kick because he’s nurtured it too much.  

He never really intended to see Jongin after that one meal with his brother, but Jongin has been...pushy in the last few months, to put it lightly. Even though it took a lot of prodding from Joonmyun’s brother for Joonmyun to reluctantly accept invitations for dates, Jongin has been responsible for most of the initiative taken in their interaction. In more accurate terms, he’s a storm that came and dragged Joonmyun with him full force; his personality is so strong. He’s straightforward about everything, especially his feelings for Joonmyun. It’s hard for Joonmyun to handle when he’s so used to being hurt as an emotional constant instead of a variable.  

The first few times they had sex, Joonmyun repeatedly warned Jongin that he was romantically invested in someone else, and Jongin had just smiled at him gently, without any judgement. Tucked Joonmyun’s hair behind his ears anyway, and caressed his cheeks. Perhaps it was then that Joonmyun’s black heart started to allow color to seep in and beat for something other than Oh Sehun’s love.

“Why are you doing this?” Joonmyun had asked. It must have been difficult, for Jongin to have sex with someone who didn’t even try to think of him the moment they reached orgasm.

“Because I want to,” Jongin had said, palm warm on the curve of Joonmyun’s hip. “But also because you deserve someone who sees through all that sadness and fights for you anyways.”

  


+

  


“You’re so beautiful,” Jongin says, moaning as Joonmyun thrusts into him. Joonmyun wants to cry because he had given up on hearing a line like that in his whole life since he was eighteen. With his personality, receiving love was a dream everyone else could attain but Joonmyun forcibly suppressed, in the hopes that he wouldn’t have to feel disappointment if he couldn’t reach it.

“Did I say something wrong?” Jongin asks, panicking when Joonmyun stops moving, and Joonmyun shakes his head.

“I’m just being stupid, give me a second,” Joonmyun mumbles. He buries his face deeper into Jongin’s hair when Jongin tries to look at him in the eye. Joonmyun knows what’s going to come out of Jongin’s mouth next, he’s so predictable, and yet-

“I love you,” Jongin says. The tilt of his lips is so genuine and teasing at the same time. “Don’t you know?”

Joonmyun refuses to cry.

  


+

  


Jongin takes Joonmyun to the beach for the umpteenth time because Joonmyun, after all these years, still loves the feeling of salt and sand on his skin. He loves the way the sun says goodbye hesitantly to the world, orange rays of soft but blinding light spreading across the ocean, turning everything in the water dark just as it disappears below the horizon. It is soothing, to yell and jump whenever the ocean licks at his ankles,  threatening to freeze his toes.

After the wind picks up a considerable speed, he sits down to dry his feet, and Jongin sits down next to him. Jongin doesn’t seem to enjoy the water as much as Joonmyun, but he tolerates it for reasons both of them don’t need to mention.

“You’ve changed,” Jongin remarks, pulling his hood over his baseball cap. He takes Joonmyun’s sweatshirt drawstrings and ties them together, scrunching the hood so that less of Joonmyun’s face is exposed to the cold.

Joonmyun asks, “How so?”

“You don’t look at the ocean like you want to live in it anymore,” Jongin answers.

  


+

  


“Do you still think of him, when it’s me in you?” Jongin asks. The last time he’d brought this up, they’d ended up fighting and not talking for days, so his tone is cautious. He’s currently curled up against Joonmyun in bed, arms around Joonmyun’s waist. It’s too warm, but Joonmyun lets Jongin do what he wants most of the time if it’s within reasonable boundaries.

Now, when he wakes up in the mornings, Joonmyun almost never thinks of Sehun. Instead, he smiles at the thought of a man with golden skin and soft lips, who laughs like he’s wheezing and looks at Joonmyun like he’s the only person in the world.

“No,” Joonmyun says, because he doesn’t know how to tell Jongin that he’s the reason Joonmyun notices nature again. Listens to music, really hears it, and tastes joy in the food he eats. Even if Joonmyun knows not to put his happiness in the hands of someone else, Jongin has forcibly taken his own contagious happiness and doubled it between them, and nurtured Joonmyun’s fragility until it’s become quiet strength.

But it seems like Jongin doesn’t need to hear what Joonmyun’s thinking to know his gratitude and love, since he kisses Joonmyun with so much happiness that Joonmyun can feel it being poured into every part of him from head to toe.

  


+

  


Recently, Jongin has been wound up so tightly that Joonmyun doesn’t know how to improve their relationship. He starts to snap more and more frequently at Joonmyun for seemingly small things or sometimes no reason at all, and if it gets really bad, he’ll start screaming and crying. It always ends, though, with Jongin apologizing for his temper and seeking reassurance.

“Will you hate me because of this?” he asks, once, and Joonmyun hears the real question loud and clear.

_Do you really love me? Will you stay with me?_

_Yes, I love you. Yes, I’ll stay_ , Joonmyun thinks. 

“Of course not,” he says. The ring sitting in his desk drawer is certainly proof enough, even if he can’t show it to Jongin just yet.

  


+

  


Jongin gasps, when he turns around. “What is that?”

“What does it look like?” Joonmyun says, cringing at the position he’s in. One knee on the ground, arms raised with a velvet box in his hands. His whole body is sore. They’d been walking on trails all day and every time he thought there would be a good spot to propose in, a child would come through yelling or another couple would be there taking pictures. Planning this had taken months of stress and behaving oddly around Jongin. He wishes Jongin would just scream joyfully and take the ring already, but Jongin is staring at him with wide eyes. “Will you, uh,” Joonmyun sighs, and barrels on despite his embarrassment, since there are people passing by and pointing at them not so subtly.

“Kim Jongin, will you marry me?”

Jongin promptly bursts into tears and takes Joonmyun into his arms while laughing. He sniffles as he says, “You’d been acting so secretively, I thought you found someone else. I thought you were going to break up with me today.”

“What ever gave you that idea?” Joonmyun asks, raising his eyebrows, and he slips the ring onto Jongin’s finger. Jongin peppers his boyfriend’s (now fiance’s) face with kisses even as he continues to sob.

Three years ago, Joonmyun never imagined his life would turn out like this.

  


+

  


“Thank you,” Joonmyun says, to his brother. He watches Jongin talk to a couple of his old high school friends, his smile bright and radiant. “For letting me meet him.”

“I just wanted you to be happy,” Joonyoung replies. “I thought that Jongin might be able to replace your undeterrable love for the ocean.”  

  


+

  


The biggest lesson Joonmyun ever learns by meeting Jongin is that...sadness...is _temporary,_ and he doesn’t need to hold on to it any longer in order to feel like he’s himself. Sadness used to be a permanent state of mind, but now it’s a shell that cracks and splits open after it’s dried, allowing what’s underneath to fully recover for the period of time it’s been hidden.

The ocean waves wash over him and move on. Unlike in the past, they’re unable to grab onto him, fingers turned into useless things, and they hiss and sigh softly as they retreat into their own depths.

Happiness, Joonmyun thinks, doesn’t ever have to be a person, but for him, it is certainly Jongin.

 


End file.
